DOOM Eternal – New Master Level: Super Gore Nest - Available Now

[BluePineapple72]

 

[AtimZarr1]

About time. Excited to try out Classic Mode. Though it sounds like the challenges are only available on the SGN Master Level? If true, hopefully they'll eventually add support for Cultist Base and ARC Complex.

 

There's also Update 4 notes. Mostly just fixes, except a Christmas event on December 10th and a faster velocity from using Meat Hook in multiplayer.

[thewormofautumn]

Nice. That’s my lunch break sorted! 

[Taurus Daggerknight]

Uh... is anyone else running into some show-stopping bugs in the level? Had a few arena gates stay up even after beating down everything that moves...

[Rolander]

Edited June 29, 2021 by Rolander

[AtimZarr1]

30 minutes ago, Taurus Daggerknight said:

Uh... is anyone else running into some show-stopping bugs in the level? Had a few arena gates stay up even after beating down everything that moves...

 

That happened to me twice already. Strangely enough, both times in the same room with

Spoiler

the Whiplash Spectres.

 

---

 

For a review: this Master Level is really intense, around the same quality as The Ancient Gods. People who didn't like the constant overkill fighting in the DLC aren't going to have their minds changed with this, but as someone who enjoyed the combat in TAG1, this was really fresh and a lot more enjoyable to play than the other two Master Levels. There's a lot of "sadistic evil" encounters where they throw combinations or numbers of enemies in tight spaces that a player wouldn't normally expect. Some arena fights where you know how it starts from the campaign, instead start off silently only to give you something much more ridiculously intense a few moments later when you've let your guard down. Most of the secrets have been replaced with pick-ups, including BFG and Crucible charges. There are about three Extra Lives in the map (Extra Life Mode strangely starts you off at 2 instead of 3).

 

Unfortunately, the challenge modes are only available for this Master Level and not the others. That said, they do have cosmetics for each difficulty you complete it on (completing on Nightmare awards the earlier ones). Classic Mode seems to give a Slayer skin (a recolor that gives bright green armor, perhaps a Classic inspired recolor for the Praetor Suit?) and completing all challenges unlocks a golden shotgun skin. I didn't get the chance to finish Classic Mode, but so far it almost feels like a "joke difficulty" like Classic Doom's Nightmare. The encounters don't get changed at all, you literally have to fight Tyrants, Mancubi, Barons with little more than your starting Shotgun. I don't know if you unlock all the weapons/mods by the end of the level or only a portion of them. At the least, you do start with the Frag Grenade, Ice Bomb, and Blood Punch along with dash, runes, maximum health/armor/ammo. I enjoy the addition of modes for the Master Level overall and I hope they add more to the other ones too. A Classic Mode for the campaign (or even TAG1) would be really interesting, where you start from scratch at the beginning of each level.

 

As mentioned earlier, there seems to be a game-stopping bug in some fights. For me personally, it was just one room that permanently closed on me 2 out of 3 times. I'm not sure what's the cause. You also can't reload checkpoint on a Master Level (or maybe that's just for Extra Life Mode and Classic Mode), so that sucks even more to get soft-locked. Some gates also feel like they take a little long to open in general actually, compared to the campaign or DLC where arena doors open near instantly after you kill the last demon. There were some awkwardly long fights because I didn't realize the blocked gate to a Buff Totem was unsealed partway through the arena fight, and Buff Totems respawn demons until they themselves are destroyed. There was an outdoor fight that also took a really long time for me to complete because I didn't realize that the fodder demons (Imps, Soldiers, Gargoyles) continued to seemingly respawn indefinitely. I had to run past them and kill the other Heavies that spawned along the path - even past some platforming bits while the fodder kept attacking. Once you understand these parts for a second playthrough though, it becomes a lot less awkward to navigate and fight through.

 

The encounters are absolutely ridiculous. It reminds me of playing Classic Doom WADs and muttering "WTF" after a wall with dozens of Revenants opens up or a surprise group of Arch-Viles appear from nowhere. The final fight itself is more packed than any other encounter in The Ancient Gods in terms of the number of Super Heavies. The Master Level itself seems to have a generous surplus of Tentacles, Buff Totems, and Tyrants. It's very tempting to pull out the BFG or Crucible against every other fight, but don't be fooled (like I was) - the escape section is probably where ammo for those are most important. Arch-Viles seem to be a lot better used in this Master Level in terms of placement and spawn timing, they felt like an actual threat. Buff Totem placement is a lot more tricky/hidden and there's a few fights "untouchable" Buff Totems until some time passes. The Berserk power-up makes a return after being absent in the DLC, that was a pleasant surprise.

 

Here are some encounter highlights. I've marked them as a spoiler, just in case:

 

Spoiler

- You fight a Marauder in fog with Mecha Zombies. In case a Spirit-buffed Arachnotron in TAG1 wasn't enough.

 

- Six Cyber-Mancubi spawn in all at once for one of the fights.

 

- Dozens of Buffed Zombies -> Dozens of Buffed Zombies 2 -> Dozens of Buffed Imps -> ...  An unexpected but funny moment. Sadly it only goes up to Gargoyles, but there wasn't much space in the room anyways.

 

- You fight two Marauders in a damaging floor hallway. Better watch that RAD suit...

 

- Four Tyrants, three Arch-Viles, lots of Barons, and a lot of other Heavies spawn in the final arena fight. The enemies are summoned through waves but this is way more packed than any fight in TAG1. I'm expecting TAG2 to go even further at this point.

 

- Buffed Super Heavies during the escape sequence, including a Tyrant, Doom Hunter, and two Marauders (among other things). I'll be impressed if anyone can kill the two Marauders at the end there.

 

---

 

Overall, I enjoyed the SGN Master Level. The absurdity and intensity of the fights kept me engaged a lot more than I was with other Master Levels. This Master Level seems to have a few game-stopping bugs unfortunately, which hopefully will get patched soon. It is a bit concerning though considering how long they took to release this in the first place. Hopefully we don't have to wait as long for the other Master Levels. Classic Mode is a fun idea and I'd like to see more gameplay modes and modifiers for the singleplayer campaign in general. A Horde mode has already been experimented with by modders, official support would be nice to have. For a joke mode, maybe a "Buff Mode" where demons are permanently buffed?

[Taurus Daggerknight]

@AtimZarr1 Yeah... that's the room that I kept hitting into this in as well. A part of me wants to keep trying, but I'll probably just wait for them to patch it out if it's a known thing. 

Edited December 2, 2020 by Taurus Daggerknight

[oCrapaCreeper]

10/10 solid level, probably my favorite. It's just a shame there are so many show-stopper bugs.

[Kristian Nebula]

Went in cold turkey to it on Ultra-Nightmare and got about halfway through... I would say some of the traps are purely sadistic. I do hope they don't overdo them this way for DLC 2. Nice challenge and a true Master Level in the sense that it made me doubt myself for the first time if I could do it on UN until the end. :D 

 

The game-stopping bugs for me seemed like a hidden fodder zombie wandering about somewhere bcs as soon as I got the last one the forcefields always disappeared.

[thewormofautumn]

Any good video playthroughs yet?

[Frank Harper]

When i playing through master-level in classic mode my health cap was 300 hp. Is that a bug or this is intended?

[Chezza]

Being all cocky, I played the level on Nightmare. It put me over a barrel. After a number of deaths (damn that toxic fight!) I thought it couldn't get anymore challenging. Then that final arena occurred, many many deaths and for the first time ever I had to stop playing and give it a break. I will return to it on the weekend to give it another crack.

 

I need to accept that I can't pass the level without using my Crucible and BFG ammo.

[bobbie424242]

2 hours ago, thewormofautumn said:

Any good video playthroughs yet?

 

Zero Master in action and its insane ! :

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnCw9ESwnFk

Edited December 2, 2020 by bobbie424242

[Kristian Nebula]

I started playing it on classic mode and halfway through the map when you arrive to the main courtyard with the actual Super Gore Nest, my comp started seriously to crawl. Turned on performance metrics and GPU was ok but CPU was jumping like crazy when the game crawled. I decided to exit and check through Windows 7 resource management what's wrong. 99% of physical memory was in use still after I had exited the game (which took ages). Never happened before with Doom Eternal until update 4.

 

EDIT. I have 32GB RAM and an i7-4790k +SSD and GTX 1660 Ti

Edited December 2, 2020 by Kristian Nebula

[thewormofautumn]

28 minutes ago, bobbie424242 said:

 

Zero Master in action and its insane ! :

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnCw9ESwnFk

Good grief.... wish I could switch weapons that fast 

[thewormofautumn]

So I played it tonight. Basically it’s a ramped up TAG in many ways but on vanilla DE maps. Only thing I don’t like are the tentacles. Never liked them in the main game either, now there more.

 

I did have the bug where an Arena wouldn’t finish though... the last one before going back down to kill the growth :(

 

had to quit the game 

[bobbie424242]

5 hours ago, thewormofautumn said:

So I played it tonight. Basically it’s a ramped up TAG in many ways but on vanilla DE maps. Only thing I don’t like are the tentacles. Never liked them in the main game either, now there more.

 

I did have the bug where an Arena wouldn’t finish though... the last one before going back down to kill the growth :(

 

had to quit the game 

 

Tentacles is a special gameplay element with the main purpose of trolling the player.

In case of doubt, there is this famous codex tip: "Tentacles can sometimes be big".

 

Edited December 2, 2020 by bobbie424242

[scalliano]

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY 1UPS???

 

Great, that double-Marauder slime corridor is now a run-ender. Fuck this map.

Edited December 2, 2020 by scalliano

[Man of Doom]

…yeah, I think I’m gonna test the waters first on UV to ensure I don’t end up losing my sanity.

 

Spoiler

And considering how this master level already contains Whiplash Spectres, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up introducing the Spirit or giant tentacles in future master levels.

 

inb4 Blood Maykrs in Mars Core or possessed Marauders/Doomhunters in Taras Nabad or Nekravol (no seriously, the former is actually a thing):

 

 

 

Edited December 2, 2020 by Man of Doom

[tgawt]

Really great level: maybe my favorite addition so far. Much more sadistic than TAG1, and a lot of fun. Some of my favorite encounters;

Spoiler

drop into a room with two spectres which later turn into two cyberfatties. Really felt like the developers knew exactly what I was gonna do in that moment, blood punch the two spectres and expect weaker enemies to fill my blood punch back up but instead they throw more punch fodder at me. Most of my favorite encounters from level are like this, realizing the developer knows the strategies well enough to fuck with the player.

all the double buff-totem rooms made me grit my teeth but the one with the shitload of cyberzombies and cacos got me, absolutely pulverising and ate all of my 1-ups.

shitload of fodder and a buff totem encounter was also really cool, wasn't particularly hard but it cool seeing that many fodder on screen.

final encounter; mowing down four tyrants is nothing because they're weaker than imps but they do take a shit ton of time and attention; game spawns three archvilles on opposite sides of the arena before you've killed the last tyrant and you'll only notice when you see them spawning monsters; kill the nearest one only to realize theres two fucking more. save your crucible, this encounter killed me the most.

ill also give a the double-marauder-in-the-death-pit a mention but I didn't find it to particularly hard.

Ran into a couple of bugs; killed all the enemies in a room and had to restart from last checkpoint, yes its the whiplash and pinky room . Also had enemies get stuck in a perch where they did nothing and given they were all heavies and super-heavies it probably made that fight considerably easier. Unfortunate because this level is otherwise pretty god damn amazing, hoping for more like this instead of the old master-level design of putting harder enemies in the same level and calling it a day.

[Martin-CAI]

Since new Doom games came out (from D2016 to this point), I found myself always improving and thinking that there couldn't be something harder than what I was playing. I'm always wrong, this was even harder than any TAG1 level.

 

The thing is, I love difficulty and challenges, but I wonder what's the limit. 

[AtimZarr1]

Related to Update 4, but apparently there were two significant undocumented changes:

 

- Unmaykr no longer has infinite ammo with the Overdrive power-up.

 

- The Holt Slayer Gate monster placement has changed: three Arch-Viles -> three Blood Maykrs -> two Doom Hunters, a Dread Knight -> and one Spirit-buffed Marauder (along with respawning Carcasses).

[tgawt]

1 hour ago, AtimZarr1 said:

- The Holt Slayer Gate monster placement has changed: three Arch-Viles -> three Blood Maykrs -> two Doom Hunters, a Dread Knight -> and one Spirit-buffed Marauder (along with respawning Carcasses).

What the fuck? Thats way the hell harder than the other two. 

[scalliano]

4 hours ago, AtimZarr1 said:

Related to Update 4, but apparently there were two significant undocumented changes:

 

- Unmaykr no longer has infinite ammo with the Overdrive power-up.

 

- The Holt Slayer Gate monster placement has changed: three Arch-Viles -> three Blood Maykrs -> two Doom Hunters, a Dread Knight -> and one Spirit-buffed Marauder (along with respawning Carcasses).

Now they are officially taking the piss.

 

Oh, yeah, and I got the infinite Imps bug, too. Right before the game gave me my second BSoD in as many weeks.

[Doom-X-Machina]

Finished it on classic mode with Ultra Violence. That was awesome! Classic green skin looks just like the default skin though... the new underwater sections were interesting.

[DavitW]

You have to fight two of those shield bastards in an acid pit, That was just gross.

[Mazze]

On 12/4/2020 at 12:34 PM, Doom-X-Machina said:

Finished it on classic mode with Ultra Violence. That was awesome! Classic green skin looks just like the default skin though... the new underwater sections were interesting.

How did you manage the first fight in the main 3 keys arena? I used one of my BFG shots on the 4 Cyber-mancubi, but gave up and quit to desktop after 5-10 minutes of pumping shotgun sticky bombs and machine gun precision shots at the two pain elementals. It seriously felt like I should have had 4 or 5 weapons by that point but BFG-aside I essentially had two.

 

On a more general note, this Classic Mode doesn't feel "classic" at all, more just a slapped-together artificial difficulty increase. The original Doom games were designed around pistol starts, so while it was more difficult, you typically had just enough firepower for each fight. This new Classic Mode doesn't seem to have any changes to balance out the shotgun-start like repurposing of ammo drops to fit your weapons. Seriously, why can't the masses of Plasma ammo have been changed to random ammo for the weapons you have available or something? It's a shame, as a few tweaks could make it really fun. I like the idea of having to only use weapons you've picked up, but the execution is off.

[Doom-X-Machina]

7 hours ago, Mazze said:

How did you manage the first fight in the main 3 keys arena? I used one of my BFG shots on the 4 Cyber-mancubi, but gave up and quit to desktop after 5-10 minutes of pumping shotgun sticky bombs and machine gun precision shots at the two pain elementals. It seriously felt like I should have had 4 or 5 weapons by that point but BFG-aside I essentially had two.

 

By that point I had the combat shotgun with sticky bomb mob, heavy cannon with both multi-missile and precision shot mods, a mod-less rocket launcher and the BFG but I already knew I would be facing Tyrants at the end so I decided not to use the BFG and save the little ammo available for it until the end (i'd already run in on ITYTD so I knew what was coming later). Basically as soon as the Cyber-Mancubi spawned in I opened up long-range spam with rockets, grenades and sticky bombs, trying to keep as much distance as possible and picking off the imps and zombies to keep my ammo/health/armour up.

One strategy that seemed to work well was going inside the base on the other side (under the keys) and making all the Mancubi come up onto the ledge and crowd the two front entry points... grenades, rockets, sticky bombs over and over and over while strafing and jumping for cover. Once the Cacodemons appeared I started moving around a lot because they're fast and I took advantage of their sticky bomb weakness. Same with the Barons. Essentially I just spammed as much heavy explosives and as quickly as I could while trying to keep my ammo count up and as much distance between myself and enemies as possible. I found the heavy cannon and it's mods to be mostly useless in that fight.

I also discovered on this "classic" run just how effective grenades are on Marauders in tight spaces. I used to always just use Super Shotgun/Ballista on them but without them available I was forced to use everything else creatively to take them down (particularly the two in the radiation pit) and discovered how effective a well placed grenade is at staggering them and allowing you to get the drop on them.

Edited December 6, 2020 by Doom-X-Machina

[Chezza]

I finally completed the Nightmare run yesterday, but I died so many times. Used the Crucible on one Cyberdemon and Archvile, pumped 2 BFG blasts at the group of Tyrants. The rest was lots of Balista, Rockets the SSG combos.

 

The Marauders in Toxic sludge is what eliminated any lives I accumulated. An unpleasant fight, that one.

 

If id increases the difficulty any further, I'm screwed. Pushed my limits.

[RoamingMaster]

22 minutes ago, Chezza said:

 

 

If id increases the difficulty any further, I'm screwed. Pushed my limits.

 

That is the whole point of master levels.